Who Am I?

Who am I?

I'm a married working mom of two young children. I'm currently working full time in a technology company and I struggle each to balance work and family life. My husband also works in a technology company as well.

Why am I writing this blog? I've always been interested in learning more about personal finance. From an early age, I was told to save. My parents had opened up a bank account for me and I enjoyed watching the balance grow with each deposit. I didn't want for much, but since I wasn't given an allowance, I had to find a way to buy the things that I wanted. When I was in high school, I did odd jobs like tutoring and had a part time job to earn money so that I could buy the things that I wanted and even then I still didn't spend everything that I made, I wanted to save a bit since I knew that I would need the money for college.

When did I start investing? Sometime in high school a relative sat me down and told me to read a book, The Wealthy Barber. One idea from the book stuck with me and that was the idea of saving at least 10% of my earnings and investing it. If only I had truly followed that advice. There was always an excuse or a reason. Yes, I had expenses associated with school and I needed to live, and I couldn't really in good conscience save the money from financial aid, but could I have found a way to at least put away a small amount from my part time job at least? Saving was not really a priority at the time, just getting by day to day was the priority? If I had put away $50 per month, would that truly have been a hardship? I didn't think long term and in some ways, I'm still trying to make up for it.

Fortunately, there was one thing that I was able to avoid, and that was credit card debt. Temptation was all around me. I was finally out of my parent's house, I had some money coming in the form of financial aid, and I wanted to go out. But, at this time, the credit card limits were really small. I think that the credit limit of my first card was only $200. Can't really do too much damage with such a small limit. Gradually, by the time I graduated, the limit went up to $2,000. I think that I was able to avoid this debt was because of my mindset about debt in general. There was "good" debt and "bad" debt. Credit card debt was, in my mind, "bad" debt and had to be discharged as soon as possible. Whenever I got a statement in the mail, I was always diligent about paying it off. I blanched at the idea of paying a lot of interest. The thought of paying 13% interest was just obscene to me. I was also taking out student loans for school, which was a necessity, and so I didn't want to add to my already large debt burden.